Gold Diggers, Sanjena Sathian [hardest books to read .txt] 📗

island on wheels, a wire rack. When I opened it, still tending the wounded arm, I saw the thing altering Anita, like a vast shaft of light, striking her chest, growing her up.

On the top shelf were three round, yellow lemons.

On the second, several small vials of liquid, and on the lowest, a large pitcher filled with the same substance. Each vial was partially covered with a piece of masking tape, on which something had been written. The plump belly of the pitcher was also covered with tape. I made out two letters—S.P.—and some numbers: 81106. I said them aloud. They were the previous day’s date: August 11, 2006.

I lifted the pitcher to examine it outside the fluorescent interior. A bit of my blood streaked the handle. Through the glass, the liquid glowed yellow gold. That hue beamed through the masking tape. S.P., I read again. S.P. I returned the pitcher to the fridge, lifted the vials. One, nearly drained, read P.N., followed by more numbers—the date (because now I had in my head that these were dates), I realized, of the Spring Fling dance. I picked up a few more until I found the one I’d been expecting to see: J.B., with the date of the Bhatts’ graduation party.

Something taken, from each of those people—from S.P., Shruti Patel. From P.N., Prachi Narayan. From J.B., Jay Bhatt. Was this what had made Anita different that summer? And that gemlike glint. Prachi’s necklace, on the parking lot asphalt. The jewelry cabinet, open in Mrs. Bhatt’s closet.

I leaned over the pitcher, S.P. It smelled like—it was—lemonade. Fresh. Saccharine and sour at once. Not quite the same concoction we’d made all those years ago; it was now laced with something new. Something that had belonged to Shruti Patel.

I drank.

It was tangy, but sweetness followed, and followed. Bubbles were settling in my stomach. I never wanted it to end. As the liquid streamed down my throat, I felt a great sense of purpose.

And then—“Stop, stop, Neil, fucking stop,” came a pinched, panicked voice. Whose? Which one of them? As a throbbing began behind my eyes, Anita’s face materialized before me. Her hair was haloed by the eerie low basement light. A cold nausea set in, and then a fuzzing of my vision. But I was still drinking.

“Neil, you have to stop, please,” I heard Anita say. Her hands closed around the pitcher; she was trying to tug it away from me, with surprising strength. “You’ve had too much.”

3.

Anita held the pitcher above me. I heard her step away and place it on the counter. I knelt, bearing my knees to the floor, as though it alone confirmed my existence. Sharp, icy knuckles pressed against my forehead.

“Neil.”

I was losing all sense of time; I could not tell if I’d been there a minute or an hour.

“Am I dying?”

“No.” She waggled her fingers in front of me; her nails were painted a bright cherry red. She wore black Soffe shorts and an oversize Harvard shirt. “How many am I holding up?”

I blinked. “Ten.”

“You’re not dying,” she said. “But the answer was four.”

“Should I barf?” I folded my arms into my stomach and leaned forward. I wanted to rest my cheek on the cement—it looked so refreshing.

“It won’t come out. If you don’t listen, you’ll feel worse.” I looked up, and there was my oldest friend, speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. She waited for my eyes to settle on hers.

“How’d you know I was down here?”

“I was in the living room. Working. I don’t sleep well.”

“It’s summer.”

“My new school sent over summer homework, so I can ‘catch up.’ They don’t think much of OHS.”

I nodded, unable to respond verbally. The cement floor smelled damp; even basements sweated in the Georgia summer. I spoke to the floor: “Is this what’s made you . . . so weird?”

Anita snorted, an unseemly sound she would never have made in front of someone like Melanie. She knelt. Her hand hovered above my head as though she were going to stroke my hair.

“I had too much once,” she said. She didn’t touch me. “I know how it feels, all acidy, your heart is racing, you’ll be sick and jittery for weeks if you don’t—”

“Weeks?”

“Get up.”

Still dizzy, seeking support, I stood, stepped over the shards of broken glass by the door, and settled myself on the staircase landing. I lifted my forearm to show Anita the blood.

“That’s not too deep,” she said. “I’ll get some Neosporin in a second. But listen to me. Just—just do what I say. Otherwise it’ll be a total waste.”

My head was drooping between my legs as I heaved like a spent athlete at the end of a trying sprint. Anita’s hand rested on the nape of my neck. At any other point in my adolescence, that touch would have been miraculous.

“I think I can do this,” she said. That furtive glance back toward the ceiling, like she was taking permission from her mother’s sleeping form. “Okay. You should, um, close your eyes.” I did, and watched strange neon fractals form behind my lids. “So, uh—focus on something you want.” The first thing I thought of was her hand on my neck, how it was a continuation of her hand shaking my shoulder all those weekends of our childhood: You’re supposed to make it up! You’re supposed to imagine! She amended: “Something you want to achieve.”

A series of those fractals passed before me, and then something settled. I was in the car with my father, holding a golden trophy, which kept me rooted to the car seat, to the earth. My father, next to me, radiated not his usual stoicism, but rather something I can only describe as supreme understanding. I was known. The world stilled, turned briefly safe.

“You’ve got it,” Anita said. I wondered how she knew. “Your breathing’s steadier.”

She was right. My pulse had slowed. But beneath my stabilized heart rate was an elevated energy that made me want to open my eyes and welcome back